risers, allowing for the desks and dressers to fit underneath, and every inch of extra space below was filled with wadded clothes, splayed books and magazines, plastic dishes, soda cans, and flattened cookie boxes. All the surfaces in the room—desktops, dresser tops, and windowsills—were covered, too, with more books, boxes of tampons, and jumbo plastic bottles of shampoo and hand lotion. One side of the room seemed particularly messy. Phoebe realized that it must be Lily’s side, which the police had probably searched.
“Do you wanna sit?” Amanda asked, gesturing to her desk chair.
“Great, thanks,” Phoebe said, unbuttoning her coat. As Phoebe took the chair, Amanda plopped down cross- legged onto a spongy-looking throw rug in the middle of the floor and pulled her knees up under her faded Lyle College T-shirt. The air, Phoebe noticed, smelled vaguely of mildewed towels.
“I take it the police have searched through Lily’s things?”
“Yeah. And they took some of her stuff last night—like her laptop and her notebooks. Her parents came by first thing this morning. They just kind of stood here for a few minutes and then they left. They’re like, totally freaked out.”
“I’m sure,” Phoebe said. “It must be so awful for them. And awful for you, too, Amanda. I had a friend who disappeared years ago, and the waiting was unbearable.”
It was a slight exaggeration. But there were several strategies Phoebe used again and again when interviewing people. The first: Find common ground with the person.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Amanda said, rocking back and forth on her butt. “I didn’t want to say this to her parents, but it just seems something bad must have happened to her. I mean, why else would she be gone so long?”
“She’s never gone off for a while and not told you?”
“No—though I’ve only known her for two months.”
That news surprised Phoebe. Wouldn’t an upperclassman like Lily pick a close friend to live with?
“How did you end up as roommates, then?” she asked.
“The girl I was supposed to room with flunked out. It was too late to find anyone else and way too late to ask for a single. Lily ended up stuck, too. She was gonna live off campus with her boyfriend, but then he took off. The college paired us, and the funny thing is, it’s worked out okay. I know I’m never going to be one of her close friends or anything, but we get along good.”
“Was she pretty upset about her boyfriend?”
“Yeah. But not like
Phoebe didn’t say anything. Just waited. That was another technique: Leave a silence alone, no matter how awkward it felt. Invariably the other person filled it, often with something unexpected.
Amanda shrugged a shoulder. “He was kind of a bad boy, if you know what I mean,” she said.
“Oh, one of those,” Phoebe said, offering a knowing smile. “Can’t be trusted or counted on for anything?”
“Exactly. Lily said she thought he’d cheated a few times. But then, what do you expect? That’s what you have to pick from at Lyle—bad boys or losers.”
“That’s a shame. Why is that, do you think?”
“The admission standards for the guys are much lower here than for the girls.”
“Really?” Phoebe said, caught again by surprise. “Why would that be? I’m new here, so I don’t know a lot about how things work.”
“What I hear is that tons more girls apply to colleges these days so most schools have way fewer guys to pick from.”
“Got it,” Phoebe said. “That doesn’t sound like a great situation.”
Amanda smiled ruefully. “It isn’t. Maybe you can help me explain to my mother why I never have a boyfriend.”
“Sometimes, though, as bad as a bad boy is, he can be hard to resist,” Phoebe said, prodding. “Do you think there’s any chance Lily heard from Trevor and went off to meet up with him?”
Amanda shook her head quickly, as if the cops had already asked that question. “I don’t think so. If she’d heard from him, I think she would have mentioned it.”
“Had she started seeing someone new?”
“Sort of. I mean, maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I heard her on the phone a few weeks ago. She was arranging to meet someone for a drink. I asked her, ‘Hot date?’ and she said it was just a guy she was starting to get to know.”
“A guy here on campus?”
“I don’t think so. I asked her if he was our year, and she just kind of smiled and said, ‘Wouldn’t I be a fool to date a little boy again?’ ”
“Someone from the town, you think?”
Amanda wrinkled her nose. “Lily’s real smart, and she wouldn’t date a townie. I just got the feeling it wasn’t a student. Maybe Blair knows.”
“That’s the friend she sometimes stays with off campus?”
“Yeah, she lives over on Ash Street. Number 133.”
“How often does Lily stay there?”
“In the beginning of the term, once or twice a week. She’d crash on their couch. But then I guess she got too busy. When she said she might stay there Thursday, it was the first time in weeks.”
“Is there anyone else she’s particularly friendly with?”
“People like her, but she’s sort of kept to herself lately.”
“Is she involved in any extracurricular activities?”
“She writes for the school paper and magazine. She really wants to be a writer. And she’s on the volleyball team.”
“And what about a sorority?” Phoebe asked. “Is she in anything like that?” She kept her eyes on Amanda as she asked this question, observing her body language.
“Oh, sororities aren’t allowed here,” Amanda said without a trace of guile. “Which is fine with me, because I wouldn’t have been picked for one anyway.”
“Is there anything else you can think of ?” Phoebe asked. “Something you might have forgotten until now?”
Amanda shook her head, woefully.
“Well, I appreciate your talking to me,” Phoebe said. “Let’s hope Lily
“Yeah,” Amanda said hopefully.
At that, Phoebe said good-bye. As she pulled the door shut, she saw Amanda still sitting on the floor, looking morose.
From the dorm Phoebe had planned to go directly to Berta’s to meet Stockton, but when she checked her phone outside, she found a message from him saying he had to cancel. “I need to spend most of today with Lily Mack’s parents,” he said. “Why don’t we plan to meet at Berta’s tomorrow—same time.”
Damn, she thought. She wondered if his excuse was legit or if he’d pulled a power play because he didn’t like her on his turf. Regardless, it left her in limbo until tomorrow. She thought about walking over to Ash Street and trying to talk to Blair now, but she knew it would be better to wait until she had a clear sense of what she was looking for. One truth she lived by as an experienced interviewer was that your first encounter with someone when their guard was down only happened once, and you had to do your best not to blow it.
She returned home, and for the next hour or so, she researched college secret societies on line. The most famous one by far was Skull and Bones at Yale, but there were plenty of others around the country. Some concentrated on playing pranks, while others had more aggressive goals, like taking control of student government and organizations. There were a few that actually did philanthropic work.
So what was the Sixes’ agenda? Phoebe wondered. There were no sororities at Lyle, so maybe it functioned as one. But if it was just a social club, why terrorize a member?
When she’d finished her search, she turned to schoolwork, completing some of her critiques of the student
